TOMMY_BOLIN
New Member
I'm guessing you have yourself sorted out by now, but for others in a like situation.
My needs are similar to yours. Boat access means you don't likely want to be hauling 100lb cylinders for a propane fridge. Our south/winter house is on a 300ac shallow lake and while it is plumbed for running water, the deep water well drilled here is arsenic contaminated. Our workaround has been pumping water the 200ft or so up the hill from the lake and storing it in 2-275 g totes. In the winter we keep snow melting on the woodstove. We flush with bucket water and bathe with canning pots heated by spruce/pine.
I have a 12V RV pump on those totes with it's own battery/charge controller/solar panel that provides running water to the yard/greenhouse. I ran a Hallmark MA0414X-7 1 h.p. 110V submersible laid out in the lake for a few years off of a 1750W Xantrex and 3-12V RV batteries located in a small box on the lake without issue. Recently I replaced that pump with the exact same model because the impeller had started to fail due to sand ingestion What I found out was, the newer model used quite a bit more power on start and the 2400W of surge I had prior was not enough, fried the inverter. I had to re-engineer the power. I now use a 24V system, with a 5kw AIMS Power inverter. In your case I would not be afraid to run a 1/2 hp pump off of a good 2-3k inverter, but for my own self I will never run another well pump setup off of anything less than 24V.
Also, my little RV pumps, I have three outside systems, run on 12V and have a 40psi auto cutoff, 3-4 g.p.m., instant on. For your modest needs, I would consider bypassing the pressure tank idea and run a simple storage/on demand pump setup as I have described.
My original intent was to plumb the house using the lake pump and a RedLion pressure tank setup I already had, but shelved it because the shallow south lake gets a bit 'biological' in the summer and is a bit rusty, good enough for bathing, dishes, but we filter drinking water through a Berkey out of the cold, deep north lake. Our water table here is pretty high, there is a 15ft deep cistern next to the house the oldtimers used, always has at least several feet of water. I believe a pump dipped into that will be our solution.
We are well off the end of the road/grid and my only real fear is fire. That pump provided 20+min of lake water for a firehose and my small gasoline pump would empty those cubes for another 10min, pump the lake 'til I ran out of fuel. It also had enough head/pressure to knock a black bear my Anatolian Shepards had treed down and on his way.
I wanted my water pump to be separate from my house battery bank because of cabling/distance, simplicity, and the fact that house batteries are one of the few likely fire starters outside of the kitchen and stupidity. Cabling/distance is also why I build all my power out here with mini-grids located where I need them. Garage/shop, woodshed, skid shack, etc.
I wired an NOS SW4024 Trace with 800aH of US Battery L-16s into the existing house wiring. We like our place quiet so most of our lighting is from rechargeable USB/solar LEDs and string lights geared towards camping. Task lighting for work we fire up the 120VAC.
My experience and opinion is a generator with some little battery charger is the dumbest, least efficient way to keep power. Gasoline is 6+USD/gal. and 'going to town' is a 2 hour time commitment each way. We leave here no more than 2x/mo. Or try to. I would be certain that whatever main inverter I chose would handle incoming AC power to charge my batteries. It will be a far more capable setup. The Trace will handle somewhat dirty power, works great. I bought an ONAN 4k generator, cost less than the little Honda 2200 I was considering, clean Westinghouse power. Quite a bit bigger, but still throw easily in the truck portable, twice the wattage, runs 20 hours on 3.5gal of fuel. Westinghouse took a break from nuclear power plants, markets the same generator they helped build under their own brand, BTW.
One of the lessons from COVID was besides fuel/food/supply shortages in the stores due to trucking/logistics, was the local small outfit we buy propane from was dry for a bit. We get 6-8 wks from a 100lb cylinder, cooking and refrigeration. I keep 6 full, would like to stretch that out to a 1+ year supply if things turn brown. We also had a small 75W AC storage freezer fail because the PoS chinese inverter I chose shut down due to extended cloudy/low battery. Did not have a provision to automatically restart. Dumb me.
Propane also gets a bit slow at -35F. The 100s are next to the house, they will still run, bit weak, but the 40s and 30s I use for portable heat around the yard/shop will not function unless I keep them inside overnight. Even then I have to use the heater to heat the tanks as they discharge.
For all these reasons we decided to move to 24V DC appliances, fridge and freezer. Unique makes a 14cu.ft. fridge and a 9 cu.ft. freezer that run on about 600whrs/day ea. I think we paid 2600.00CAD shipped to the town nearby, good deal. I added a Victron 24/24 converter to keep the power in line on advice of the dealer we bought them from. We'll keep the stone axe simple old Consul propane fridge for backup, the other two cabins will keep their reliable propane fridges as well. So, 50% bigger fridge, 50% bigger freezer, less propane, should run all right on the current system.
Day in day out all we run off of the inverter is our laptops, the satellite internet, stereo/XM radio, and now refrigeration. The cell booster is upstairs, has it's own little mini-grid to run it. My wife has a stackable LG washer/ gas drier combo in her backpocket. At about 2-300W each, they will fit in just fine, I'm sure.
Way more opinion than you wanted to hear I'm sure, but that's how I look at it. Good luck.
My needs are similar to yours. Boat access means you don't likely want to be hauling 100lb cylinders for a propane fridge. Our south/winter house is on a 300ac shallow lake and while it is plumbed for running water, the deep water well drilled here is arsenic contaminated. Our workaround has been pumping water the 200ft or so up the hill from the lake and storing it in 2-275 g totes. In the winter we keep snow melting on the woodstove. We flush with bucket water and bathe with canning pots heated by spruce/pine.
I have a 12V RV pump on those totes with it's own battery/charge controller/solar panel that provides running water to the yard/greenhouse. I ran a Hallmark MA0414X-7 1 h.p. 110V submersible laid out in the lake for a few years off of a 1750W Xantrex and 3-12V RV batteries located in a small box on the lake without issue. Recently I replaced that pump with the exact same model because the impeller had started to fail due to sand ingestion What I found out was, the newer model used quite a bit more power on start and the 2400W of surge I had prior was not enough, fried the inverter. I had to re-engineer the power. I now use a 24V system, with a 5kw AIMS Power inverter. In your case I would not be afraid to run a 1/2 hp pump off of a good 2-3k inverter, but for my own self I will never run another well pump setup off of anything less than 24V.
Also, my little RV pumps, I have three outside systems, run on 12V and have a 40psi auto cutoff, 3-4 g.p.m., instant on. For your modest needs, I would consider bypassing the pressure tank idea and run a simple storage/on demand pump setup as I have described.
My original intent was to plumb the house using the lake pump and a RedLion pressure tank setup I already had, but shelved it because the shallow south lake gets a bit 'biological' in the summer and is a bit rusty, good enough for bathing, dishes, but we filter drinking water through a Berkey out of the cold, deep north lake. Our water table here is pretty high, there is a 15ft deep cistern next to the house the oldtimers used, always has at least several feet of water. I believe a pump dipped into that will be our solution.
We are well off the end of the road/grid and my only real fear is fire. That pump provided 20+min of lake water for a firehose and my small gasoline pump would empty those cubes for another 10min, pump the lake 'til I ran out of fuel. It also had enough head/pressure to knock a black bear my Anatolian Shepards had treed down and on his way.
I wanted my water pump to be separate from my house battery bank because of cabling/distance, simplicity, and the fact that house batteries are one of the few likely fire starters outside of the kitchen and stupidity. Cabling/distance is also why I build all my power out here with mini-grids located where I need them. Garage/shop, woodshed, skid shack, etc.
I wired an NOS SW4024 Trace with 800aH of US Battery L-16s into the existing house wiring. We like our place quiet so most of our lighting is from rechargeable USB/solar LEDs and string lights geared towards camping. Task lighting for work we fire up the 120VAC.
My experience and opinion is a generator with some little battery charger is the dumbest, least efficient way to keep power. Gasoline is 6+USD/gal. and 'going to town' is a 2 hour time commitment each way. We leave here no more than 2x/mo. Or try to. I would be certain that whatever main inverter I chose would handle incoming AC power to charge my batteries. It will be a far more capable setup. The Trace will handle somewhat dirty power, works great. I bought an ONAN 4k generator, cost less than the little Honda 2200 I was considering, clean Westinghouse power. Quite a bit bigger, but still throw easily in the truck portable, twice the wattage, runs 20 hours on 3.5gal of fuel. Westinghouse took a break from nuclear power plants, markets the same generator they helped build under their own brand, BTW.
One of the lessons from COVID was besides fuel/food/supply shortages in the stores due to trucking/logistics, was the local small outfit we buy propane from was dry for a bit. We get 6-8 wks from a 100lb cylinder, cooking and refrigeration. I keep 6 full, would like to stretch that out to a 1+ year supply if things turn brown. We also had a small 75W AC storage freezer fail because the PoS chinese inverter I chose shut down due to extended cloudy/low battery. Did not have a provision to automatically restart. Dumb me.
Propane also gets a bit slow at -35F. The 100s are next to the house, they will still run, bit weak, but the 40s and 30s I use for portable heat around the yard/shop will not function unless I keep them inside overnight. Even then I have to use the heater to heat the tanks as they discharge.
For all these reasons we decided to move to 24V DC appliances, fridge and freezer. Unique makes a 14cu.ft. fridge and a 9 cu.ft. freezer that run on about 600whrs/day ea. I think we paid 2600.00CAD shipped to the town nearby, good deal. I added a Victron 24/24 converter to keep the power in line on advice of the dealer we bought them from. We'll keep the stone axe simple old Consul propane fridge for backup, the other two cabins will keep their reliable propane fridges as well. So, 50% bigger fridge, 50% bigger freezer, less propane, should run all right on the current system.
Day in day out all we run off of the inverter is our laptops, the satellite internet, stereo/XM radio, and now refrigeration. The cell booster is upstairs, has it's own little mini-grid to run it. My wife has a stackable LG washer/ gas drier combo in her backpocket. At about 2-300W each, they will fit in just fine, I'm sure.
Way more opinion than you wanted to hear I'm sure, but that's how I look at it. Good luck.
